Florida woman strives to help
Alaska football team
By ALEX DEMARBAN
Anchorage Daily News

February 20, 2007
Tuesday PM

When the Barrow (Alaska) Whalers played their first football
game on a finger-numbing day in August, they quieted naysayers
who said high school football would never come to the Arctic.

Now a Florida woman who heard
about the team's first season wants to help make the sport stick
in the nation's northernmost community.

If starting a football team
in Barrow was unlikely - the nearest opponent is more than 500
miles away - Cathy Parker's idea seems just as improbable.

The Jacksonville-area accountant
says she intends to raise $500,000 for an artificial-turf field
to replace the gravelly stretch of dirt beside the Arctic Ocean
that bloodied players last year. The money will cover the cost
of buying, shipping and installing 160 tons of artificial turf
in Alaska.

"It's going to be like
an NFL field here in the Lower 48," said the spunky football
mom last week. "It's going to be awesome. Barrow will have
a second-to-none field, and it will happen."

She got the idea last fall
after her sons saw a documentary about the team on ESPN, made
by a crew that flew to Barrow to witness the team's opening games.
She was impressed by the players' passion, and by boosters who
defied odds to create the team.

After all, flying opponents
to Barrow can cost $20,000 per game, said Trent Blankenship,
superintendent for the North Slope Borough School District.

But the program was greatly
needed in the Inupiat village of 4,200, Blankenship said. The
school's 50 percent dropout rate mostly involves males, he said,
and football gives boys something to do in the summer. Too many
are drinking and getting in trouble, Blankenship said.

Students responding to a survey
last spring said they wanted more extracurricular activities.
Football topped the list, though many students had never seen
a game in person.

After a clinic in June, about
40 boys, about one-third of the high school's males, made the
team. Men who hadn't coached in years taught football fundamentals:
how to cradle the ball, block and tackle.

To pay for the first season,
Blankenship used a one-time cash infusion from the Alaska legislature
meant to help rural schools. The money paid for travel and bought
snazzy blue-and-gold uniforms, training equipment and helmets.

Some residents criticized the
team's six-figure budget and the focus on athletics instead of
books, among other things. But hundreds turned out for the first
game. Volunteers rolled telephone poles to the sidelines for
seating, and built goalposts from leftover pipe. Rumbling buses
served as locker rooms where players escaped frigid winds.

The effort was inspiring, said
Parker.

Her husband, Carl, an NFL wide
receiver in the late 1980s, now coaches high school football.

"We know as parents that
(a football program) will make a difference for generations to
come," she said.

Jacksonville-area residents
have helped create a fundraising nonprofit called Project Alaska.
A Web site should debut late this month where people can give
to the Whalers, she said.

She and her husband are asking
NFL officials for a grant, she said. A banker has promised $100,000,
she said. Navy and Air National Guard officials are looking into
flying or barging the football field to Barrow.

The field will be a lot easier
to maintain, she said. Last season, volunteers in Barrow mixed
flour with the white paint for hash marks so it would stick to
the dirt. But gulls kept eating the mixture, she said.

ProGrass, a Pennsylvania company
selling artificial turf, will subtract at least $75,000 from
the $400,000 cost of a field, said Steve Coleman, regional sales
director.

The company hopes to install
the field in July, when the weather should be warm enough, he
said. Because glue might not survive the winter's 50-below cold,
panels could be attached with Velcro, he said.

The plastic blades and crushed
rubber padding have weathered subzero streaks in Wisconsin and
other states, Coleman said, so they should hold up to Barrow's
cold. If the blades do crack, the artificial turf will still
be "night-and-day better than anything they've got going,"
he said.

"They won't have bandages
all over them as they're playing," he said.

ProGrass higher-ups have told
him to make the Barrow field a reality, because football can
channel aggression for at-risk boys while boosting morale for
schools and athletes, he said.

The football program has changed
"the whole climate of the school," Blankenship said.
The Whalers won one of six games, but that didn't diminish the
players' enthusiasm.

"Attitude was way up,
especially with the boys," he said. "The grades with
boys were higher, and kids were excited about football."

In part because of football,
the school's graduation rate should be up 30 percent this spring,
he said, with nearly two-thirds of the class receiving diplomas.

Some students who wouldn't
normally care about school are definitely more motivated to come
to class and work for better grades to stay on the team, said
Michael Gonzales, a junior and the team's center, who's a star
wrestler for the school..

"It gives them something
to do," he said.

With the first season behind
them, the Whalers will improve, Blankenship said. Linemen, including
several kids weighing 265 pounds who don't play other sports,
will begin drilling in the snow this week, he said.

The team has eight games scheduled
this season, including the first-ever Pipeline Bowl with Valdez,
honoring the 800-mile line that sends oil from the North Slope
to Prince William Sound.

And the team might get lessons
in Florida this May. Blankenship talked to Parker for the first
time last month, he said. He was awestruck by what she'd already
organized, he said.

Parker told him the Whalers
have been invited to travel to Florida to train with the Bartram
Trail Bears, where Carl Parker coaches, Blankenship said. If
the Whalers can pay their way to Jacksonville, restaurateurs
and other business owners have promised free room and board,
she said.

The team will start raising
money for the trip soon, Blankenship said.

"Words fail me,"
he said. "I don't even know how to say thank you to people
who would do such a thing. It's amazing."